Our purpose
Our purpose is to show how true religion promotes the civilization and honor, the prosperity and prestige, the learning and advancement of a people once abject, enslaved and ignorant, and how, when it falls into the hands of religious leaders who are foolish and fanatical, it is diverted to the wrong ends, until this greatest of splendors turns into blackest night.
~ Abdu’l-Baha, The Secret of Divine Civilization, p. 78
I often hear the comment from people that they are uninterested in “organized religion,” and when I ask why, or what it was that turned them away it is normally something related to the practices of the religious institution, the admonishments from other parishioners on the adherence to religious laws, a disagreement in interpretation of scripture, or something of this type. Rarely is their repulsion from spirituality related to disbelief in God, but to the wrongs of man and how the original message of the particular manifestation, whether it be Abraham, Jesus or Mohamed has been perverted.
For years I felt this way as well and shunned the Church. I was fond of saying that I did not have a problem with Christianity, but I did have a problem with my fellow Christians. It took me years to realize that I was harming myself by not seeing through those forces that were darkening the brilliance of God’s message. When I began searching I found a deeper spiritual truth.